


try and hide the night

by tosca1390



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He wished someone would just tell him what was going on.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	try and hide the night

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Harry Potter Next Gen Comment Ficathon](http://hondagirll.livejournal.com/115949.html). Prompt: James Sirius, Harry; _march onward, my wayward son_.

*

 _You look just like your father_ was a familiar line by the time James was five. He had the hair, the eyesight, the pointed nose, the forehead, the awkward knees—

He hated it. 

When he was seven, Mum and Dad made him get glasses. His eyesight was so bad he couldn’t hide it anymore, and the teacher from his primary school wrote notes home about it constantly. He broke a pair every two weeks because he hated them so much. 

“I will magically adhere them to your face if you don’t stop breaking them, and then you’ll never be able to take them off!” Mum exclaimed after the twelfth pair snapped in a tragic corridor accident that hadn’t been an accident at all. 

James just crowed with triumph and raced up to his room. He tripped on the stairs and ran into Albus and missed his doorway, what with his vision being completely blurred, but that was beside the point. 

A few nights later, as he was about to go to bed, Dad came into his bedroom. He was still dressed in his work robes; he was working late a lot now, and he and Mum had rumbling rows in the lowest level of the house sometimes, when they reckoned the kids were asleep. James didn’t know what they were fighting about, but she was working from home more now, and he and Albus and Lily weren’t allowed to play outside without supervision. It was strange, how close she watched them, like she thought someone might snatch one of them away.

“So, what’s wrong with the glasses?” Dad asked after a moment. 

Turning his face into his pillow, James shrugged. His head hurt from three days with no glasses and squinting to read everything. It got so bad that day, he asked Albus to read his homework to him. 

“I reckon they’re not the most fun accessory in the world, but they’ll help you,” Dad went on. The floorboards creaked under his feet as he walked across the room and sat on the edge of James’s bed. 

“I hate them,” James muttered into the pillow. The room was too warm for early spring, the air stuffy and stale.

After a beat of silence, a gentle hand settled on his back. “I’ve had my share of problems with them, too,” Dad said, rubbing his back right between the shoulder blades. “But it’s better to wear them than to not. I’d get the worst headaches if I didn’t have them on.”

James’s face burned hot against the soft pillowcase. 

“Besides,” Dad said after a minute, “I reckon your mum is about to lose her mind over it. She could use your help with everything.”

“Why don’t you help her then?” James muttered. 

Dad’s hand stilled on his back. “There’s... there’s a lot going on at work, for both of us. It’s hard to explain, Jamie,” he said after a horribly quiet pause. Dad was the only one who called him _Jamie_. 

James huffed, pressing his face into his pillow even harder.

“Turn over, will you? Come on,” Dad coaxed, ruffling his hair. 

With a dramatic groan, James turned over. His gaze was still blurred, but the headache was beginning to subside. Dad was just a dark smudgy outline, but everything about him felt tired. James didn’t remember the last time Dad had been home in time for dinner. 

Dad pulled something out from his pocket. The lenses caught the candlelight. “I picked these up for you this afternoon. If you don’t like them, I’ll get you another pair. But I reckoned you might like them,” he said, handing them over to James. 

Sitting up, James turned the glasses over in his hands. They were rectangle frames, slim and a cool dark green color. He didn’t _hate_ them. He just wished he didn’t have to wear them. “I’ll try them,” he said finally, slipping them on. 

The room and Dad’s face came into sharp relief. Dad _did_ look very tired, his own glasses slipping down his nose, but he smiled. “Good. You just let me know if you get tired of them.”

He patted James’s knee and stood up. Stomach jumping, James reached out and grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong, Dad?”

Slowly, Dad sat back down. It was sometimes hard to remember that his dad had been in a war, let alone helped win it; he was so quiet and still at home. When he got mad, it was never an explosion like Mum; it was a silent choking anger, low and hard to decipher through the floorboards.

(He’d have to ask Teddy to snag him some Extendable Ears, now that he thought about it).

“Is there going to be another war?” he asked after a long time in which Dad didn’t say anything. 

Dad swallowed hard and smoothed a hand over James’s hair. “We’re all still trying to piece everything back together after last time. Sometimes, it’s harder than we want it to be. There are things I have to deal with that will help everything settle down again,” he said quietly. “Lay down, it’s late.”

Frowning, James scooted back down in his blankets. Dad extinguished his candles and left him with a soft _sleep well_. 

James wore the glasses. It didn’t settle down.

 

*

When Lily was old enough to hold scissors and James trusted her not to maim him, he had her cut his hair so horribly that Mum was forced to shave it down. 

“You’re trying to drive me completely mad, aren’t you?” Mum said as she plated the three of them some sandwiches for lunch the same hot August day. “I wasn’t even this bad when I was eight.”

“Was Dad?” James asked. Lily was fascinated by rubbing his shorn head, and sat next to him so she could rub her hand across it in a petting motion. Al had his nose tucked into a book.

Mum snorted, sitting with them at the kitchen table. “Not a bit. At least I don’t reckon so. He didn’t have much of a childhood,” she added after a moment, her voice softening. “He was quite well-behaved.”

James smiled and tucked into his food. At least they had that to keep them apart. 

Dad never really said anything about the hair; he was busy quite a lot, with work and travel and all. When he came back from a work trip to the Continent and finally saw it, he had smiled a bit. But both he and Mum looked tired and worried a lot, and so James started reading the newspaper every day, trying to reckon out what they weren’t telling him. 

The Ministry was dealing with corruption, whatever that meant. Other species were complaining of not receiving equal rights with wizards and witches as promised. Dad was trying to push through new regulations for the Aurors, and Mum was trying to keep the Department of Mysteries from focusing strictly on Dark Magic. One month, when he was eight and having loads of trouble with math at Muggle primary school, there was an article about someone being arrested and having a few Time Turners in his possession, whatever those were; for days after, Mum and Dad were on edge with each other and with him and Albus and Lily. 

A few times, James wrote Teddy about it. Teddy was smart and at Hogwarts now and would tell him if it was really all that bad. 

Teddy wrote back: _It’s all politics and games, James. Your mum and dad, and your uncles and aunts too, are just trying to make sure everything is done the right way and people are treated the way they should be. It’s not easy and it’s still settling down. That’s why you’ve just got to be good for them right now, and take it easy._

James didn’t like that answer. He wished someone would just _tell_ him what was going on.

His hair grew back in, finally. So, he dyed it blond with a spell he’d picked up from Teddy and by borrowing Mum’s wand (he was only ten, he didn’t have a wand of his own, so what else could he do?). It didn’t help that the spell went a little wild and ended up coloring Lily’s eyebrows and her teddy bear a sunny shade of yellow. Also, he’d been out at the park when he decided to do it, and that was a whole other problem. He reckoned he’d seen Mum mad before, he could handle it. 

But when the letter from the Improper Use of Magic department showed up with a very sheepish personal note at the bottom from Uncle Percy ( _Ginny, I’m sorry, but I’m required to treat all incidents in the same way. You should really try to control your children and their access to your wand—_ ), he knew he was in for trouble. 

“If you want to dye your hair, wait until you’re eleven and you have your own wand!” Mum scolded him from the doorway of his bedroom. Her face was flushed, hair straggling around her neck; the letter from the office sat clutched and crumpled in her fist. “But now I’ve got to explain how you knew that spell in the first place, and how you got a hold of my wand, _and_ have them come in to reverse the damage done to your _seven-year-old sister_!”

James sat in silence on his plush window seat, his back pressed against the glass. His scalp burned; he smelled smoke and singed hair. 

Sighing, Mum came into his room and sat on the end of his bed. “It’s not that bad,” she said after a moment. “Easy to fix. But your Uncle Percy is just going to bloody lord this over me now.”

He smiled slightly, his knees pulled up to his chest. “I didn’t mean to get Lily,” he said. 

“I know you didn’t, sweetheart. It’s just---with the glasses and the hair and now this, what exactly don’t you like about yourself?” she asked, loosening her fist and smoothing out the official Ministry letter on her thigh. “You’re so handsome, you look just like--”

“Like Dad, I _know_ ,” he bit out sharply. “I’m just like Dad, it’s great, but I don’t even know what that means anymore because he’s not around. I don’t want to be like that.”

Mum looked at him, eyes wide. “Oh. James, Dad’s just--”

“Got stuff to do, I get it. We all get it. The war’s over, he’s not a hero anymore, and maybe he should let someone else do something for once,” he muttered, flushing angrily. 

A soft kind of _huh_ left her mouth. She watched him for a long quiet moment before standing up from the bed, the letter light in her fingertips. In the sunlight James saw the shiny silvery silvers of scars on her arms. Neither he or Albus or Lily knew where they were from. 

“We’re just doing our best to make sure you have every chance to live how you want to, James,” she said. 

He gritted his teeth and looked down at the scuffed floorboards. 

“Dinner’s in an hour or so. Tomorrow they’ll be by to fix everything up” she added before walking quietly out of the room, shutting the door behind her. 

Much later, after a weird dinner where Mum and Dad just looked at each other strangely, and Lily sniffed about her eyebrows and her teddy bear ( _oops_ ), and Albus couldn’t stop staring at James’s hair, after they’d been put to bed, James slipped out into the corridor and knocked on Al’s door across the hall from his. Together, they crept down the stairs and dangled the Extendable Ears down to the second floor. Mum and Dad were in the sitting room, talking quietly. 

“We have to tell him some things,” Mum said evenly.

“He’s too young--they’re all too young,” Dad said sharply.

She huffed impatiently. “I’m not saying we tell them _everything_ or go into excruciating detail, but James is confused, and you’re not around right now, and it would help. Al is already asking questions—he saw Ron’s arms the other day and can’t stop talking about it.”

The room was silent. Al and James looked at each other, steeling themselves for discovery. 

“James will be at Hogwarts next fall, and he’ll read all about it there,” Dad said finally. 

Mum made a weird frustrated noise, like a growl. “He’ll read about the facts, yeah. But there’s more he’ll want to know, and you’re the only one—“

“I’m not ready, Ginny,” he said shortly. “I’m not ready to pull it all out for them, to have to explain why Teddy doesn’t have parents, and why Bill’s face looks the way it does, and why I can’t always be around, and why everyone I ever tried to call family is dead.”

James shivered, even in the lingering heat of the day. Mum was silent for a long time. “Not all of them are,” she said finally, voice slightly strangled. 

Dad breathed out loudly. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“You remember what it was like to have people keep secrets from you. They thought you were too young to handle it, and they were wrong,” she said flatly.

He nearly growled, the sound deep and low in his throat. “ _Of course_ I remember, that’s how Sirius—”

“Harry, stop,” she said, cutting him off mid-snap. “I’m not trying to hurt you. You know what happens, and how we get there. That’s all I’m saying.”

There was a sigh, and the creaking of floorboards; Dad was pacing. “I know. I’m sorry. The legislation’s just about done. I’ll be able to take a break soon.”

“Do you even remember what those are like?” she said, the smile evident in her voice. 

“Not entirely, no. It couldn’t be half-done, though. Everything had to be fixed, or it wouldn’t matter twenty years from now,” he said wearily. 

“I know,” she said softly. The pacing stopped, as did the talking.

Wrinkling his nose, James pulled back his Ear and pushed up to his knees, his eyes moving to Al’s face. Al always looked so serious, so much older than he was. It made James a little jealous. 

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Al whispered. 

Nodding, James tugged on his arm and snuck back upstairs, Al in tow. 

*

The Hogwarts letter came in the evening of James’s eleventh birthday, after the small family dinner and his favorite chocolate cake. Dad had made everything himself, a special treat all by itself. Now, James sat in his room, sorting his gifts on his bed, when there was a knock on the door. 

“Yeah?” he called, fingers trailing over his new broom. He thought he might even sleep with it tonight, if Mum would let him get away with it. 

Door creaking open, Dad stuck his head in. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” James said after a moment, setting the broom aside. 

For the last year, Dad had been around more than James remembered. Mum said that didn’t count, because Dad had been around plenty when he was a baby and a toddler. James just knew that Dad was talking more, taking them to school and out to the magical parks in the city for flying lessons and such. 

Everywhere they went, magical or not, someone would stop them and say how much alike they looked, how wonderful it was. Albus had the eyes and the dark hair, but his face was so like Mum’s and there were reddish hints in his hair and freckles, so it was James, always James. And now, since he’d started reading up on Dad and the war, to be the oldest son of Harry Potter felt more constraining than ever. 

Dad sat down on the side of his bed, a thick envelope in his hand. “The broom’s great, isn’t it?” 

James nodded. “Brilliant. Thanks again, Dad,” he said, slightly awkward. 

Smiling, Dad looked down at the envelope in his hands. They were silent for a moment. The sounds of Mum and Lily singing off-key to each other drifted upstairs through the cracks in the floorboards. “So, here it is,” Dad said after a moment.

He handed him the envelope. It felt heavy and thick and wonderful in James’s hands, like freedom. “Wow.”

Dad smiled, his eyes crinkling behind his glasses. “I know exactly how you feel.”

The remains of sunset crept through the room, deep blue and purple. Hesitating only for a moment, James carefully opened the envelope and pulled the letter out. He opened it and read it over and over, the smile growing on his face. 

“This is brilliant,” he breathed out after a moment, his fingers tracing over the ink. He thought he could smell Hogwarts on the paper. 

He looked up at Dad, who was still smiling. His stomach jumped, his eyes fixed on the faded scar. “Were you scared to go?” he asked after a moment. 

Mouth twisting slightly, Dad clenched and unclenched his hands as they rested on his knees. “A little. But I had Hagrid to help me, and then I met your Uncle Ron right on the Platform, and your Grandmum, and I wasn’t at all, after that. I was excited that my life was going somewhere else than I had expected,” he said with a faint chuckle.

James scooted closer, clutching his letter tightly. “What if I’m not in Gryffindor?” he asked. 

Dad met his gaze, glasses to glasses. “Then you’re not, and you’ll be in whichever House you’re in. I’m proud of you no matter what,” he said quietly. “You have the choice. The Sorting Hat will let you pick if you want.”

“What if I’m not sure?” Something in him instinctively wanted Gryffindor, but was that him or his father? He couldn’t tell. 

Reaching out, Dad ruffled his hair. “I reckon you’ll have to trust the Sorting Hat to do its best, then. The important thing is that you’re happy, and that you’re going to be at Hogwarts. The Houses don’t define you for life.” 

“A lot of people thought so though,” James said quietly. He thought of a young man he’d read about named Tom Riddle, and how an entire school had banded together in a time of need. 

Dad stilled for a moment, something freezing in his gaze. “They were wrong,” he said finally, voice low. “Jamie, someday, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“I’m ready now,” James protested. 

“But I’m not,” Dad said softly. 

*

Hogwarts opened everything up to James, good and bad. 

In some ways, it became the home he always wanted. It was full of questions and answers, and a treasure trove of information on everything his father had kept hidden. James learned every cold detail from start to finish about what happened when and how it all ended within the first month of coming to Hogwarts. But it left him wanting; the deeper need of _why_ and _how_ was still left empty within him. Those answers lay with his father. 

In other ways, it was harder than he’d expected. He was Harry Potter’s eldest son, and that haunted him everywhere. 

The only places he didn’t feel on display were in Herbology with Professor Longbottom ( _“You can call him Neville, really—” “Ginny, no he can’t—”_ had been an entertaining exchange between his parents on the train platform); in Charms with Professor Flitwick; and in flying lessons with Madam Johnson-Weasley (she wouldn’t let him call her Aunt Angelina--she said it made her feel old, whatever that meant). In those classes, they treated him normally. Headmistress McGonagall even gave him a dispensation to try out for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and he made it as a Chaser. He didn’t mind that his father had done so as well. 

Everywhere else, eyes were on him always, questioning and judging. In Defense Against the Dark Arts, he struggled and his fellow students were wide-eyed with disbelief. In Muggle Studies he flourished and they called him a bookworm. His roommates wanted stories of the war, and he couldn’t give them any. It seemed as if everyone else knew his father’s life better than he did. 

“He’s a hero. You’ll want to be an Auror, then? Just like him?” they asked, over and over.

James didn’t know much, but he knew he didn’t want to be his father all over again. 

*

“So, given James the map yet, Harry?”

James’s head snapped up from his plate at Uncle George’s question. Christmas at the Burrow was loud and flooded with family, as usual. James was beginning to wish he had stayed at school for the holiday break. Fourth year at Hogwarts was the hardest yet; it made him not look forward to his fifth year, and his O.W.L.s. 

“The map?” he asked, looking over at his dad. “What map?”

Uncle George smiled thinly. “The Marauder’s Map, of course. It’s tradition. Right, Harry?”

Dad took a long swallow of wine. “No, I haven’t yet, actually,” he said evenly.

“What map?” James repeated, his gaze stuck on his dad. 

“Map of the school. Excellent for sneaking about and—and staying _out_ of trouble,” George finished uneasily, looking back and forth between Dad, Mum, and James. “Definitely not for sneaking out or making trouble. Definitely.”

All the cousins perked up at that. James set his fork down, suddenly not hungry for dessert. “Why can’t I have it?”

“We’ll talk about it at home,” Dad said firmly. 

Next to James, Albus cleared his throat. James paid him no mind. “No, we won’t,” he muttered, standing up from the table. 

“James—“

“No, Mum—we won’t talk about anything. We never do!” James blurted out, face hot. “My friends—my professors—Scorpius Malfoy knows more about you than we do. Everyone knows more than we do, and we’re the ones they ask! I’m bloody tired of it!”

The table was as quiet as it ever had been. All his cousins stared at him, bewildered; the adults, meanwhile, stared at Dad. The clinking sounds from the kitchen faded into nothing. 

Dad just watched him, his jaw slightly slack. He didn’t say a word. 

Shaking his head, James pushed away from the table. “Going home,” he muttered, waving a hand towards them as he took off for the living room and the hearth. After a moment, footsteps echoed behind him; he turned and saw both Al and Lily, their coats and his in their arms. 

“We’ll go too,” Al said, handing him his coat. 

Lily stepped forward and slipped her small hand into his. The solidarity was heartening.

Later, the three of them piled into James’s bedroom and poured over photo albums and books from Dad’s home office. The candles sputtered as the house wheezed with winter breezes around them. Their parents still weren’t home from the Burrow.

“That’s the first Order of the Phoenix,” Al said, dark head bent over the photo album. “See? There are Dad’s parents.”

“Bloody hell, we look just like them, Lil,” James muttered. 

Lily curled her fingers around the photo, plucking it from the page. “We really do,” she murmured, tucking her long hair behind her ear. She looked much older than twelve to James in the moment. 

James settled against the headboard of his bed. “Is it weird how they named us?” he asked after a moment, eyes trailing around his room. This room belonged to Sirius Black, and Al’s belonged to Regulus Black. Was there anything left that was wholly theirs alone?

Al snorted. “Well, at least your names are normal. I’ve got two headmasters,” he muttered. “I mean, it’s unique, but a bit weird.”

“We’re living monuments to dead people,” James said quietly. 

Sighing, Lily lay back on his bed, her head fitting on his shoulder. “That’s a little dramatic, James. It’s how he remembers them. I reckon it’s nice,” she said, still fingering the photo with the grandparents and namesakes they’d never met. 

“Don’t you reckon Mum had some people she wanted to remember too? Why didn’t she have a say?” Al asked from the foot of the bed. 

“Ask her yourself. You don’t know that she didn’t. Besides, she only lost her brother Fred, and Uncle George has his son Fred. Perhaps they divided like that,” Lily said. 

“That’s not how it works,” Al said, a bit of schoolmarm slipping into his voice. “Besides, what about Teddy’s parents? She knew them, so did Dad, and they died the same time.”

Snow fell with wet plops against the windows. James stared up at the ceiling. “We don’t know how it works at all,” he said, a hot cherry pit of anger blooming in his middle. “They haven’t told us a bloody thing.”

Lily poked his ribs lightly. “It was hard for Dad. He probably doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“So what? Everyone else talks about it. They ask _us_ about it, and we’re completely stupid. It’s part of our history, and we ought to know what happened,” he said sharply. 

“We _do_ know what happened. Dad beat Voldemort,” she retorted. 

“But _why_ was it Dad? And why do Mum and Dad and Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione have all those scars?” James pressed, the words seeping tightly out of his throat. 

One of the candles sputtered out, but they paid it no mind. “Bloody hell,” Al murmured.

James glanced over at him. “What?”

Bent over a book, Al merely shook his head. “While Professor Snape was the Headmaster, Voldemort had professors there that tortured students. They were the Carrows, brother and sister, in charge of discipline. Their form of detention was torture.”

Immediately, James thought of the scars running up Mum’s forearms. “That’s in a book?” he asked weakly. 

“Yeah,” Al breathed out. “D’you reckon Mum—?”

“Yeah,” James said, cutting him off quickly. Lily shivered next to him. Suddenly, he felt sick to his stomach. “Yeah, I reckon she was one of them.”

The three of them fell silent. Outside, the wind whistled its way through the buildings of London. 

“I’d rather know than not,” Al said after a long moment, meeting James’s gaze. 

James pushed his glasses up his nose and nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

After some time, their parents still not home, Al and Lily fell asleep in his bed. James stayed awake, listening to the sounds of a house that had seen so much more than just the three of them. The candles sputtered out, leaving them in darkness. As James finally fell asleep, he thought he could hear voices in the corridor, in the attic, but he couldn’t be sure. 

The next morning, their parents didn’t say a word about the night before, and didn’t for the reminder of the holiday break. But while unpacking his trunk back at Hogwarts, James found a diary tucked into his new Weasley sweater. Affixed to the cover was a note in his mother’s handwriting. 

_James-_

_This is my journal from my sixth year at Hogwarts, the year your father and Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione were on the run. It won’t answer everything, but it’s a start._

_Your father worked very hard to put his past behind him, to give his children something more. You have to give him time to open it back up._

_Love,  
Mum_

Below the journal, inside the sweater, was a cracked and worn piece of parchment folded in thirds. Another note was attached, this time in Dad’s scrawl. James picked it up hesitantly and unfolded it, plucking the note from the front. 

_Tap it with your wand and say, “I solemnly swear I am up to no good”. Don’t get into too much trouble._

James pulled out his wand, murmured and tapped, and immediately smiled as an entire map of Hogwarts sketched itself out in front of him. The possibilities were endless; he couldn’t wait to tell Al.

*

James set the journal down on Mum’s desk. “There’s not really anything about Dad in here.”

She sat back in her chair, raising her brows. “I know.”

It was late evening, the day after he and his siblings had returned from Hogwarts. Dad had been acting decidedly normal; not a word passed between them about the Christmas holidays. Right now, he was out with Lily and Albus visiting with Teddy and Andromeda. James, angling for a moment to speak to his mother alone, had stayed behind. 

He sat down in the chair across from her, pressing his glasses firmly up the bridge of his nose. “Why?”

She met his gaze straight-on, a fierce set to her face that he hadn’t recognized before. “He wasn’t there. I was. It was more important to focus on what I could do rather than obsess about what I couldn’t do.”

“So you weren’t together? That whole thing about getting together after the Quidditch match, and knowing then and all, it’s all bollocks?”

Mum smoothed her hands through her hair. “No, James. It’s true. But it wasn’t as simple as that. If you were in Voldemort’s way, you were killed. Your dad was trying to protect as many people as possible from that, including me.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. That made sense, given the current circumstances. “Shouldn’t he have let you see what you were capable of yourself?”

She smiled slightly. “He’s still learning that one.”

“I’ve looked it all up. I know what happened. I don’t understand why he has to be so secretive about it,” he muttered. He sounded whiny and he knew it, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

“James, it happened to _him_. It’s not just some story or fable. There are some things about it that I still don’t know, and I’ve had to accept that,” she said, pushing back from her desk and coming around to his side. “He’s not keeping quiet to hurt you, or any of us.”

“No one ever talks about this either,” he said, rapping his knuckles on the journal’s cover. 

Frowning, she shrugged. “I kept the journal for you all. I wanted you to read it eventually.”

He sighed and slumped back in his chair. “People want me to be him,” he mumbled finally. 

“Well, we want you to be you,” she said gently, reaching out and stroking his hair. 

“Does he want me to be an Auror?”

“Do _you_ want to be an Auror?” she asked in return. 

James shut his eyes and thought about it for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

She smoothed his hair. “You have time. It’s a luxury, so enjoy it.”

He opened his eyes and met her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. 

Eyes shining, she leaned down to kiss his cheek. “Oh, don’t be. You’ve just got too much of your dad in you for anything to be simple,” she said with a wistful smile. 

*

Apart from some minor scrapes and Quidditch injuries, James had managed so far to avoid the Hospital Wing while at Hogwarts. Both Albus and Lily were up there more often than him (though Hugo was up there the most; he had issues with pyrotechnics, that one), and so prompted visits from their parents. 

The longest time he spent in the Hospital Wing was sixth year, after the second Quidditch match. One moment, he’d been trying to get into position to catch the Quaffle from Rose, fighting to see through the icy rain pelting them sideways, and the next, he’d been flat on the hard dead ground, glasses lost and leg twisted at a horrible angle. He shut his eyes against the shouting and the weather and the pain in his stomach and leg and slipped into achy blackness. 

When he woke next, he was in a cot in the Hospital Wing, breathing in clean and sterile air. The whitewashed stone glowed pale yellow in the weak winter afternoon sunlight. He groaned and lifted his head up. His left leg still ached, and he was sure he had a Bludger-shaped bruise on his abdomen, and his head felt like it was stuck in a vise. 

“You’re up, then?”

James turned his head to the side, and nearly rolled out of bed in surprise. “Dad?”

Sitting at his bedside, Dad smiled wanly. For the first time in James’s recent memory, he was dressed casually and not in his work robes. His hands were closed around something in his lap. “That was quite the fall,” he said. 

James groaned again, rubbing his eyes. “Don’t remember a bit of it. What happened? Did we win the match? Tell me Rose pulled it off.”

“You were hit by a wayward Bludger, and Angelina wasn’t close enough to stop your fall,” Dad said. 

Inching up to a sitting position, James passed his hands through his hair. “I was up pretty high. I should feel worse than this,” he mumbled. 

“I was watching you, so I helped out a bit. I had a nasty fall myself once or twice during my Quidditch days,” Dad said, standing up and moving to sit on the edge of the cot. 

Blinking, James stared at him. “You—you were at the match? But Mum said you both couldn’t make it.”

Dad shrugged, smiling slightly. “She was called into work, but I reckoned I could come alone. Gave me a chance to visit with Neville. Besides, your mum is a handful to watch Quidditch with, you know that. Sometimes it’s better alone.”

Something hot rattled deep in James’s chest. He ducked his head, rubbing at his eyes. “Well, thanks,” he murmured. 

Dad patted his knee through the blankets. “You’re an excellent flyer, James. Much better than I was,” he said. 

The back of James’s neck grew warm. “Really?”

“Really.”

James looked up, squinting with the effort to make out the specifics of Dad’s face. “My bloody glasses,” he muttered. 

Dad pressed something cool into his hands then. “They fell off during your fall. I grabbed them and fixed them.”

Opening his hands, James found his familiar glasses with the deep green rectangle frames, shiny and like new. He grinned and slipped them on. “Did we win?” he asked again, all eagerness. 

Adjusting his glasses, Dad looked at him dead on, quite seriously. “Yes. Gryffindor won,” he said, a smile breaking across his face. 

James clenched his fist in victory, smacking it against the bedsheets. “Excellent,” he breathed. 

A soft silence settled between them, lacking their usual tension. James looked out towards the windows, watching as the sun began to dip behind the trees. The wing was silent, with just the ticking clock to keep them company. 

“Will you tell Mum about the fall?” he asked after a while. 

Dad sighed. “Well, you’re obviously fine. But she’d want to know, and fuss a bit.”

James grimaced. “Bloody wonderful.”

“Al and Lily would tell her, in any case. They were up here for hours, before leaving for dinner.”

“Can’t blame them for leaving. It’s bloody boring up here,” James muttered. 

Dad laughed quietly. “Oh, I know. Spent quite a bit of every year up here.”

Swallowing hard, James flattened his hands against the sheets. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. If I wasn’t in one of the beds, Ron or Hermione or your mum was. We all had our fair share of incidents over the years here,” Dad said, a faraway look seeping over his face. 

For a long moment, James held his breath. He was on the edge of something, apart from his mum’s journal and the Marauder’s Map; he wanted so badly to tread ahead, but hesitation gutted him. 

“Will—will you tell me about some of them?” he asked finally, meeting his dad’s gaze. 

Dad watched him silently. The clock ticked on and on in the background. James felt the heat curl up his neck towards his face. His leg throbbed dully. 

“My fifth year was the first year the Order of the Phoenix was reformed,” Dad said after a long still pause. The words sounded as if he was dredging them up from the bottoms of his shoes, low and rough. “My godfather, Sirius—who you’re named for—was stuck in Grimmauld Place the whole time, under house arrest.”

“Because they thought he’d murdered your parents,” James said quietly 

Dad nodded, the line of his jaw tight. “Yes. And Voldemort—he could plant visions into my head. He led me to believe he had captured Sirius, and had him at the Department of Mysteries.”

That little bit threw James for a loop. “Plant visions in your head?” he asked dumbly. 

For the first time, Dad looked uncomfortable. “It’s… it’s complicated,” he said after a moment. “Anyway, I decided to go after him. Ron, Hermione, your mum, Neville, and Luna all came with me. And it was a trap.”

Chest tightening, James sat back against the headboard. “Oh,” he said after a moment. 

Dad’s hands clenched and unclenched on his knees over and over. “There were Death Eaters there, and we fought them as best we could. That’s how your Uncle Ron got the scars on his arms, from an accident there. Some members of the Order showed up once Professor Snape had let them know where we’d gone, but—“ 

James knew the rest of the story, from the official Ministry records after the war. “Sirius Black died there,” he finished quietly. 

“Yes, he did,” Dad said, voice soft and slightly sad. “And then, we all had to spend time up here, afterwards. I had the least amount of time as a patient, but I was up here every day for days with the others.”

For the first time in years, James felt like he might begin to cry. “Dad, I’m sorry,” he blurted out after a moment. 

Dad looked at him, eyes wide behind his glasses. “It’s all right, Jamie,” he said. “It’s time you knew some of this. You’ve been ready for a while now. I reckon I’ve finally caught up to you.”

James ducked his head. He soon felt a hand ruffling his hair. “Madam Bones says you’ve got to be up here for at least the night. Are you tired? I can go,” Dad said quietly. 

Shaking his head, James met his dad’s gaze. “No, I’m not tired. You can stay for a while, if you’d like,” he said, a little bashful.

Dad smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his glasses. There was a bit of grey at his temples now, James noticed. “I can stay for a bit, yeah.”

He ended up staying until the sky had darkened and Madam Bones came around with more pain-relieving potion and a plea for James to sleep. For the first time in years, Dad actually tucked him in, and sat with him until he fell asleep. 

There were still holes to fill, and answers to seek. But James Sirius Potter, at sixteen, felt more like himself than he ever had before.

*


End file.
